Facebook bans researchers into Facebook

Researchers looking into advert transparency, and the spread of misinformation on Facebook found themselves banned for a violation of its terms of service.

The group was examining the spread of political adverts on Facebook and had developed a browser plug-in to collect data on which ads are shown and to whom. This is a hot topic of course, as Facebook’s political adverts aren’t fact-checked. The company makes some data available, but not how the ads are targeted.

One researcher said, “Facebook is silencing us because our work often calls attention to problems”. However, Facebook has had its fingers burned by third parties data scraping before.